Sex, Money and Power: New Report on Women as Donors and Candidates

The 2012 congressional elections saw a record number of women elected to both the House and Senate. And even though most of his large campaign donations came from men, Barack Obama relied more heavily on female campaign contributors than any general election presidential candidate since at least 1988.

Still, while women are playing bigger roles as candidates and as donors than they were twenty-plus years ago, in some ways things have changed surprisingly little. In the 1990 campaign cycle, 22 percent of all itemized federal contributions came from women. So far in this election cycle, 25 percent of all contributions have come from women. This 3 percent increase, substantially smaller than the increases seen in the numbers of female elected officials, is one telling component in a much more complex story about how campaign donations by women have changed over time.

In a special report released today, the Center for Responsive Politics’ Sarah Bryner and Doug Weber detail trends in contributions to women candidates, and from women donors. Some takeaways from the report, “Sex, Money and Politics“:

As candidates, female Democrats rely most heavily (and male Republicans, the least) on the support of female contributors. That’s been the case since 1990.

Of the top 100 contributors in 2012, 11 were women; that’s down from the 21 who fell into that elite group of donors in 1990.

As politics has become more polarized, so too have the patterns of donations from women. They donate more consistently to congressional Democrats. But women who have outside employment (as compared to homemakers) have moved to the left, while those who self-identify as homemakers have moved to the right.

The increase in female House candidates and winners since 1990 is largely attributable to Democratic women. The number of Republican women House candidates and winners has stayed static — it has even declined since a 2008 high.

Even though women overall are more evenly represented in Congress than ever before, the “donor gap” between men and women is still real, and remarkably steady.

“The rich data on individuals that CRP has been carefully curating over more than two decades is a treasure trove of information about how money flows through and shapes politics,” said Sheila Krumholz, CRP’s executive director. “Today’s report represents our most-in-depth analysis of gender-related data and one we hope will provide greater understanding of trends in the funding of American politics for years to come.”

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